a meaningless phrase repeated again and again begins to resemble truth.

It's tough to break yourself as news to a town that already knows you.

But we've all ended up giving body and soul to Africa, one way or another. Even Adah, who's becoming an expert in tropical epidemiology and strange new viruses. Each of us got our heart buried in six feet of African dirt; we are all co-conspirators here. I mean, all of us, not just my family. So what do you do now? You get to find your own way to dig out a heart and shake it off and hold it up to the light again.

Food is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is generally the one more likely to make you groan with pleasure.

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive.

The last generation's worst fears became the next one's B-grade entertainment.

Oh, that river of wishes, the slippery crocodile dream of it, how it might have carried my body down through all the glittering sand bars to the sea.